Which SSD drives do/may not have ECC?

[CustomDesigned]

From stackexchange:
The moral of the story is: use drives with ECC. Unfortunately not all drives that support ECC advertise this feature. On the other hand, be careful: I know someone who used cheap SSDs in a 2 disk RAID1 (or a 2 copy RAID10). One of the drives returned random corrupted data on each read of a particular sector. The corrupted data was automatically copied over the correct data. If the SSD used ECCs, and was properly functioning, then the kernel should have taken proper corrective action.

I have a 2 drive SSD raid1 array. After only a few weeks, it has 16000 mismatches. Drive models are
PNY CS900 500GB SSD
Phison Driven OEM SSDs SATA SSD

Other machines have Samsung EVO drives, which have an "ECC error count" field in SMART. These drives do not.

This server does not support HDD without a power supply upgrade.

 

[unwind-protect]

Or use a filesystem with build-in checksumming such as ZFS.

 

[CustomDesigned]

Or use a filesystem with build-in checksumming such as ZFS.

Running vms with file based images is not ideal. I do use btrfs on host and most vms. But that doesn't help with repair unless I run on both devices raw.

 

[Hardcore Games]

BD burners can make a permanent backup copy

 

[Harlow]

I have a 2 drive SSD raid1 array

As people have said on various forums, RAID1 is not for data security, it's for drive redundancy. If a drive dies in a Point-of-Sale terminal with RAID1 just after the shop opens, the clerk can continue using the till until closing time, then IT can replace the faulty drive.

Or use a filesystem with build-in checksumming such as ZFS.

Exactly. I have two multi-disk TrueNAS Core RAID-Z2 arrays running on old HP servers, with 40GB and 56GB of ECC RAM. I can lose any two disks from each array and (fingers crossed tightly) not lose any files during re-silvering.

This server does not support HDD without a power supply upgrade.

It's easy to re-purpose a cheap old computer to run TrueNAS, UnRAID, etc., fill it with spare hard disks and boot from SSD. Having ECC RAM is nice, but not essential if you have other backups. Any CPU with at least two cores is fine for a basic TrueNAS setup.

BD burners can make a permanent backup copy

I used to burn files to 25GB BDR. Now I use 800GB LTO4 tapes in a Quantum SAS tape drive. I keep multiple backups of all important photos, videos, etc. on various media.

After only a few weeks, it has 16000 mismatches.

The last time I used RAID1 was 20 years ago with two 1TB hard disks. Errors gradually crept on to both drives unnoticed, but I recovered most of the files after breaking the array. Lesson learned.

For fun and giggles I set up a RAID0 array on four Ultra320 SCSI drives and an Adaptec controller. It was fast for a hard disk system, but eventually one of the drives died. Nothing lost. End of experiment.

 

[Hardcore Games]

LTO4 is way behind the curve. LTO9 is today's standard.

 

[Harlow]

LTO4 is way behind the curve. LTO9 is today's standard.

True, but for a home user there are cost implications adopting current technology.

Four years ago I bought two used external Quantum LTO4 SAS drives ($100 each), plus 120 barely used tapes ($2 each) from a company which was upgrading. I also found a full height internal SAS drive on eBay for $30. I have a 5 or 6 boxes of brand new tapes for critical work.

Contrast that with prices for modern LTO9 drives and tapes (I haven't checked second hand prices).

Cost of a new LTO9 Quantum drive at Amazon is $5,271.21.
https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-LTO-9-Tape-Drive-Height/dp/B0CM716QD8/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3HG2L30HDHXQL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.c2DJxvgG3xMNAbwjk1XnHyhynXx-rkCFBeUhKwlAr4o_t9Si87AVAb7_aoldldv0rCDZEbAid-h8UUuD6AJc9TWAaKkTNRiBASN0dE4FMJLo64nZTKCkZBqU5tZgRnJFndRZoupqpsqYEEDQdc3-T20LFJGilPpYZBwvc7FpO-w4Syi8ubcd1IgetKjd7XZ7ScsIH7es1cqgrUGpABq_CU0hKBLmyQ8-PPxmNbhPQlo.q03WcUA7MDRSpm4ePKiA6Vv14xjJgb5VkoISbhThPBA&dib_tag=se&keywords=lto9+tape+drive&qid=1727506681&sprefix=LTO9,aps,158&sr=8-2

Cost of a single IBM LTO9 tape on Amazon is $93.00.
https://www.amazon.com/Ultrium-9-02xw568-18tb-45tb-Lto-9/dp/B09HTNSCVK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2O22GI2QZ9OGJ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.G0JTN2y0w9W1i73q6EbszSQjuMYKEKWiEKbRdSvE4mQ8bTLr77avNusfFvPXm7brtm_rQAujx75xaXarCwETFPtnqVg_pfz0C1BbZf64AjuSUpOto31cv9ggmcXWbHXs9VA0zh-arBf5bmpsnR6peJzW6843OAifUbNwQ-VzFzwDW6-drLYI92UWerABtepfBclmI0S-xtQiNqapwZX31DjWE2y8nCkApl3EbpbBws8.oNC6uuC0sieg7xMQkIxVg77_vLeS7j7BrHruDPhl24Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=lto9+tape&qid=1727507270&sprefix=lto9+tape,aps,153&sr=8-1

I freely admit that LTO4's 800GB native capacity is way behind the curve, but I can backup a complete vacation's worth of RAW+JPG images (typically 600GB+) on to a single tape and make several copies at $2 each.

If and when LTO14 comes out and I can afford it, I won't need so many tapes.

 

[Wirko]

All SSDs have some form of ECC - they would be too unreliable without. In the last decade or so, it's been called LDPC. The large number of mismatches means that at least one of your SSDs has very many bad cells, so the correction mechanism cant correct all the errors. Can you post the complete SMART data of both drives?

 

[Hardcore Games]

I recall a dual LTO-9 assembly with a USB-C interface. It was something like $13 grand which is a tad more then some can afford.

 

[kapone32]

Some NVME drives do not come with DRAM. If that is the case you know there is no ECC. You should never use 2 different drives in a RAID array either. You might be better served doing something like (just an example) Kingston NV2 in RAID 0. A more secure RAID 0 system would be using SSDs. They do not have the cliff drop off that NVME suffers from. Even RAID 0 NVME will suffer. Where NVME shines is Direct storage and moving newer Game files around. The fastest storage you can buy are the Intel Optane drives for boot or marketed for Gaming like the Seagate 530. The Kingston NV2 and Solidigm (whatever) drives that bought Intel Optane are 2 that seem to have a little extra juice in them. There is now the NV3 as well. Black Friday is the end of the month too.